From Beatlemania to One Direction: being a fangirl of boy bands

By Craig Mathieson

22 November 2018 — 7:00am

For years, when Jessica Leski told people, whether they were casual acquaintances or decision makers at film funding bodies, that she was making a documentary about the dedicated female fans of pop music boybands, she would get the same response. “They’d say, ‘how’s that going to be a film? It’s just going to be about girls screaming and crying’,” remembers the Melbourne filmmaker.

Determined as she was, a tiny part of Leski understood their disbelief. The Victorian College of the Arts graduate had been a teenager during one of the golden ages of the boyband – the fizzy, choreographed rise of Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync at the turn of the century – and she had been thoroughly unimpressed.

I Used to be Normal: A Boyband Fangirl Story.Credit:Madman

“They were hard to ignore but I was dismissive of them,” Leski says. “They didn’t interest me at all. I thought the music was simple, the guys in the band weren’t good looking and the fans were simple for choosing what was at the top of the charts.”

Leski understood the obsessiveness of fandom, thanks to her fervent appreciation of Harry Connick Jr, but it wasn’t until 2012, when she was 31-years-old, that Leski heard One Direction’s One Thing and then tracked down the impish video and swiftly got the boyband bug. The song was irresistibly repetitive, the video was sweet and fun and within weeks her father was bringing One Direction memorabilia home for her from London business trips.

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Leski understood the mechanics of manufactured boybands – Harry Styles was and is her One Direction favourite – but she was also excited by the shared communities created by fans whose support for their pop idols extended from concert queueing to fan fiction and online art. The hyper-excited screaming was just a very loud surface layer.

“I realised that, like the wider population, I’d misjudged what a boyband fan was because there was just this cliched representation of them,” Leski says. “That got me thinking that I hadn’t seen a representation of fandom, and this particular fandom, in a way that felt respectful.”

Pursued through years of interviews, borrowed gear and a Kickstarter campaign, Leski’s second feature documentary, I Used to be Normal: A Boyband Fangirl Story, takes that initial moment of clarity and expands it to reveal the both the history of the genre and the depth of connection that it can encompass. In Leski’s film fandom is a crucial adolescent gateway.

I Used To Be Normal: A Boyband Fangirl Story.Credit:Madman Films

“I could see that the band were helping not just girls but people through difficult times,” Leski says. “Creating friendship groups and doing really interesting things beyond the image of five guys singing a pop song on a beach.”

As much as to satisfy her curiosity as to give the film a grounding, Leski initially interviewed songwriters, stylists and psychologists about the recurring boyband phenomenon. At the same time she was developing storylines through avid fans who spanned multiple generations: from America 16-year-old Elif was a One Direction fan, while Sadia was a devotee of Backstreet Boys, while in Australia 33-year-old Dara had lived for nineties boyband Take That, while 64-year-old Susan had succumbed to Beatlemania back in 1964.

“As the years went on we were spending time with the main characters and when we first sat down to edit it became clear that we didn’t need the expert voices because the girls and women were experts themselves,” Leski says. “They were insightful, they didn’t just blindly love these groups. The film didn’t need the experts and I’d come to a place in my life where I didn’t need to justify it.”

The film joyfully acknowledges the communal excitement and wryly notes moments of excitable excess. As it unfolds over several years you see how boybands are a lens through which teenage girls get a sense of physical desire and how to navigate their emerging sexuality and how the boyband experience is a salve for depression, a consolation for loss and a spur for creativity. The clarity and complexity sweeps away fangirl cliches.

“I knew the emotion was there and that we could surprise people with where the film went,” Leski says. “Even towards the end of gathering footage I could see that boybands were the entry point for the story, but once you’re in it it’s about getting to know these girls and women and going on a journey with them into their lives.”